Baltimore city has agreed to pay a penalty of up to $4.75 million to settle lawsuits filed by Maryland and an environmental watchdog group over multiple pollution and other violations at its two municipal wastewater treatment plants.
The penalty, one of the largest assessed in Maryland for water pollution violations, is part of a consent decree that city officials negotiated with the Maryland Department of the Environment and the nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore. It is to be filed in Baltimore Circuit Court once it is approved by the city’s Board of Estimates, which plans to take it up Nov. 15.
The deal announced Nov. 2 marks a critical milestone in resolving more than two years’ worth of maintenance, staffing and operations problems at the city’s Back River and Patapsco treatment plants. Blue Water Baltimore and MDE both filed lawsuits seeking to force corrective actions, and state regulators at one point took the unprecedented step of seizing control over the Back River facility.
While it's good that they're being punished for their long-term pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, I'd rather have them be forced to spend twice as much to fix the problems.
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